


Dance With Me

by msred



Series: Starting Over [21]
Category: Chris Evans (actor) - Fandom, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Dancing, Engagement, F/M, Fluff, Love, Memories, POV First Person, Romantic Fluff, Surprises, fiance, teacher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-24 21:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22084858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: We had only about two weeks until the wedding, which meant my time was ticking down as a teacher. For the past two months I had been highly aware that every major event, every milestone, I took part in was for the last time. I couldn't have been more excited about becoming Chris's wife, but I also couldn't say that I wasn't a little bit sad, a little wistful, about leaving behind that part of myself and the relationships I had built along the way. Thankfully, Chris was really good at helping keep me on the positive side of things.
Relationships: Chris Evans (Actor) & Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor) & Reader, Chris Evans (Actor) & You, Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Reader, Chris Evans (Actor)/You
Series: Starting Over [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1423663
Comments: 10
Kudos: 50





	Dance With Me

_ 16.5 months together (early June, Year 3) _

I clasped the straps of my Mary Jane style heels around my ankles and gave myself a last look in the full-length mirror. I’d done myself up so that everything was slightly enhanced compared to normal, but for me, 'normal' meant hair that was down and straight and almost no makeup at all, so 'enhanced' doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot. In this instance, I had curled my hair into loose, bouncy waves and applied a mostly nude, slightly pinkish-brown shimmer to my eyes. Convinced it was different enough from my normal 'teacher look,' I closed the bedroom door behind me and headed down the hall to the living room. 

Chris looked up from playing with Millie, who was sprawled across his lap on her back, when he heard my heels on the hardwood. “Whoa.”

“What?” I stopped in my tracks at the entrance to the living room.

“Just … I," he sat up straighter in the chair, "wow.”

“Chris," I nearly whined, insecurity creeping in, "what?”

“You just … that’s not what the teachers who chaperoned my prom looked like.”

I laughed a little and came fully into the room. “What did they look like?”

“Teachers,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Okay," I drawled, slightly confused, a little teasing. "So what do  _ I  _ look like?”   


He shifted Millie off his legs and stood from the recliner, taking a couple steps toward me. He rested his hands on my hips then slid them down the outsides of my thighs a few inches. When he closed them, fisting the fabric in his hands, my hemline rose from just above my knees to the middle of my thighs. “ _ You _ look like a woman who is about to be late for her chaperoning duties because her fiance messed up that pretty hair and make up she spent an hour working on.” He slid his hands back up to my hips, taking the dress with them, and leaned down to kiss me. He didn’t give me a chance to kiss back before he tugged at my bottom lip with his teeth and started walking me backward, only stopping when my back hit the wall. 

My own hands closed around the cotton of his t-shirt at his collarbones and I started to lift one leg to hook over his hip, but I caught myself just before my toes came off the floor and pushed him away a little. “Mmmm, while that  _ does  _ sound better than standing around watching an empty dance floor for the first hour until the kids actually start showing up, it’s kinda my job.”

“Eh,” he shrugged, leaning back in to press his lips against my neck, just under the corner of my jaw, “what are they gonna do, fire you?” 

“Chris!” I swatted at his shoulder and he groaned but pulled back and let go of my dress. He reached for my hand and guided me back to the chair with him, pulling me down onto his lap so that he and I were piled onto one side of the seat and Millie stretched the length of the arm on the other.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“Yeah, well, I may only have two more weeks to work there, but I’d kinda like to go out on a good note.”

He sighed dramatically. “I guess.”

I nudged my shoulder against his and kissed the side of his forehead, just in front of his hairline. As I pulled away, I looked down at my dress, self-conscious. All the teachers dressed up more than normal when chaperoning prom. For the kids it was a formal event, and there seemed to be this unspoken agreement that we would respect that by wearing something a step or two above what we would normally wear to work. For me, that was a simple blue faux-wrap dress with lace and a few subtle sequins the same color as the fabric. (Blue had always been my favorite color, and the one I’d always tended to gravitate toward in my clothes, but that had intensified since Chris had made it very clear that he liked the hue on me.) I hadn’t thought twice about the dress when I put it on, but his attention made me worry that maybe it was too much. It wasn’t inappropriate - it covered all the things that needed to be covered, it wasn’t overly short, it was fitted but not tight - but I had to question whether I had overdone it in my attempt to step up my teacher-dress game. I thought back to the last time I’d had prom duty, three years earlier, and my dress that year hadn’t been drastically different, but it hadn’t had sequins, either.

“Hey,” he interrupted my internal debate and pressed his forehead against my temple, nudging my cheek with his nose, “what’s going on in there?” His arms tightened around my waist.

I pulled away a little and turned so that I could face him. “Is it too much?”

“What?”

“My …  _ look _ . Is it too much? I don’t want to go overboard.” 

He sighed through his nose and closed his eyes, dropping his chin to his chest. “No, baby. You look great.”

“But is it  _ too much _ ? I mean, it’s not  _ my  _ prom. I don’t want to look like I’m trying to, I don’t know, recapture my own high school days or make it about me or anything like that. And I  _ definitely  _ don’t want to look like I’m trying to be sexy. That would be … just wrong.”

“Okay, just for the record, I find you sexy when you’re hanging around the house in pajama shorts and a t-shirt or when you’re dressed professionally for work, and everything in between. So if what you’re going for is  _ not sexy,  _ I’m the wrong person to talk to.” I smiled over at him and he rubbed a thumb over my hip bone through my dress. “My reaction was,” he trailed off for a few seconds, seemingly lost in thought, “I get to spend so much time with you being comfortable that seeing you more done up than usual, it,” he trailed off again, then, “honestly?” He lifted an eyebrow at me and I nodded for him to go on. “It made me think about what you’re going to look like in a couple weeks.” The way I looked back at him, the softness in my eyes and the tiny hint of a question still etched in my brow, encouraged him to go on. “I know you’re not doing the whole big wedding dress thing, so whenever I think about the wedding, I kind of imagine you like this.”

The dress I would be wearing for the wedding was actually quite different from that one in a lot of ways, but I understood what he meant. And my stomach tightened at the thought that he’d been affected that way. There had been a lot of moments like that over the course of our short engagement, moments when the wedding, or marriage itself, would come up, either overtly or in more subtle ways, and he would become excited, affectionate, even passionate. I’d never questioned the seriousness or the sincerity of his desire to marry me. I knew him well enough to know that if it hadn’t been what he really wanted, if he hadn’t fully thought it through - even though we’d only been an actual couple for just under a year and a half - he wouldn’t have asked. Still, I didn’t hate the reminders now and then, especially when they looked and felt like they just had.

“And,” he went on, “I don’t think anyone will think you’re trying to steal their thunder or relive your own prom. You look incredible, but you don’t look like a prom-goer.”

I laughed, “God, I hope not. If we’re being totally honest here, I’m doing much better at 36 than I was a 16. I  _ cringe  _ when I think about how I looked at my own prom.”

He joined me in laughing. “Aww, come on, I bet you were adorable.”

“Ugh,” I rolled my eyes, “I was a mess, especially my senior year. My dress was, well, it was okay. Not great, but not terrible. Someone let me think it was a good idea to wear yellow, though. If I ever remember who that was, I’m hunting them down.

“Yellow?” He drew his eyebrows together and grimaced a bit.

“Yellow,” I confirmed. “And no, in case you were wondering, my complexion was no different then than it is now. If anything I was even more pale then, because at least now I spend time outside with Millie, doing yard work, stuff like that.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in yellow.”

“And you never. Will.” 

He laughed again and kissed my shoulder. “Okay, so you wore yellow and probably glowed in the dark, but other than that, you had to have been cute.”

“No. The dress was the least of the offenses. Teenagers now are  _ so  _ much better with hair and make-up than my friends and I were. Hell, most of them are better than I am now.”

“Stop,” he rolled his eyes.

“No, I mean it! And I didn’t eat well or exercise like, at all back then, and that’s all I’ll say about that.” He pulled me a little tighter against him and rested his cheek against my shoulder, his beard rubbing the side of my arm as he rocked the chair and we swayed with it. “There’s a term my kids use all the time, ‘glow-up,’ have you heard it?” He shook his head. “It’s a pun on the words ‘grow up’ and it basically means coming out of your awkward phase. People use it in reference to getting rid of braces, losing baby fat, acne clearing up, just generally outgrowing puberty. But let’s be honest here,” I chuckled a little under my breath, “I look  _ way  _ better in my thirties than I did in my teens or even early and mid-twenties. Glow-up, knowledge, self-confidence, whatever you want to attribute it to, I feel like I look far better as a prom chaperone than I did at either of my own proms.” 

“Well,” he lifted his head a bit to prop his chin on my shoulder, “I still think you’re probably selling young-you short, but I will agree that 36-year-old you is doing a lot of things right.” 

I’d rested both of my hands on his forearms where they crossed over my waist, and I brought one up to cradle his cheek and turn his head toward mine so I could press my lips against his. “You’re smooth, you know that?” I asked him without pulling away.

“I mean,” I felt his lips curl into a grin, “I do what I can.” He kissed me again then pulled back. “And if it makes you feel any better, I wouldn’t say that I was winning at my senior prom either.”

“No?” I smirked.

“No.” He reached down and popped up the footrest of the recliner, leaning back until he’d pushed the back of the chair to about a 45 degree angle and pulling me back with him. I shifted so that I was on my side, nestled between his body and the arm of the chair and somewhat draped across him. I was aware that our time until I had to leave was somewhat limited, but I didn’t need to rush, not yet anyway. I definitely had time to hear whatever he was going to say. “For one thing, I was  _ convinced  _ that I was far less scrawny than I was, and my suit reflected the size I  _ wanted  _ to be, not the size I  _ was _ . Plus, I mean, it was 1999, so not a great time for fashion in general.” I turned my face into his neck and giggled. “Hey,” he squeezed my side, “what are you laughing at,  _ Sunshine _ ?” I gasped and smacked his stomach and he only grinned. “To add insult to injury, I thought hair gel was my best friend. I could have gone through a hurricane and come out the other side with my hair still spiked straight up in the front and plastered down everywhere else.” I reached up to run my fingers through his hair, devoid of gel and soft under my palm. “So hey, you’re not the only one who’s benefitted from the passing of time.”

“No I’m not,” I let my hand trail down his neck and over his chest, finally bringing it to rest on his ribcage, “time has been very good to you.” He closed a hand over mine and brought it up to kiss the inside of my wrist, then turned his hand to link our fingers together, bringing our hands back down to his chest.

We sat like that for a few minutes, quiet, peaceful, content. Finally, I shifted, pushing myself gently up off him; I was going to have to get moving if I was going to be able to get myself out the door in time to not be late. He watched me sit up, bringing the back of the chair upright again and coming with me part of the way. When I turned and dropped my feet to the floor off the side of the footrest, he spoke up, “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you? I really don’t mind. I won’t look as good as you,” I scoffed and he ignored me, “but I do have a pair of khakis and a button-down. That isn’t plaid,” he added quickly. 

He was just trying to be supportive. I knew he didn’t really want to go, and we both knew it would probably be more of a hassle than anything. But I loved him that much more for offering. “It’s really okay. You would just have to deal with a lot of attention that you don’t really want, and the kids would be paying more attention to you than their own prom.”

“But what do  _ you  _ want?”

“I want my last prom as a teacher at this school to be a chance for me to see my kiddos all dressed up and having fun one last time. That’s it; it’s about them.” 

He nodded, “Okay. It’s probably for the best anyway, balance things out, even if it took 20 years.” I tilted my head and looked down at him from where I stood in front of the chair. “Well, I went to my senior prom with a date and left alone. This way, I don’t have to go to the actual dance but I get to have you come home to me. Balance.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me and I closed my own eyes at him and laughed. 

“That you do,” I leaned down to kiss him and curled a hand around his neck. I pulled away just enough to look him in the eyes. “I still don’t understand that.” He blinked back at me. “How  _ anyone  _ could be with you, then choose to go with someone else.”

“Let me just reiterate,” he widened his eyes and tried to look serious, “seventeen-year-old me was not exactly a catch.” I rolled my eyes; I’d never believe that I wouldn’t have wanted  _ any  _ version of him. “Besides, if getting you, now, Miss Prom Chaperone, is my repayment for getting dumped at my own prom,” he shook his head, “no contest.”

I kissed him again, my heart speeding up when he reached around me to cup his hands around the backs of my thighs at the same time that he slipped his tongue past my lips. I forced myself to pull away when his hands started to drift higher, dragging my dress along. “You’re playing dirty,” I told him. “If I don’t go right now I’m going to end up letting you make me late.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“You know  _ exactly  _ what I mean.” I pulled his hands off me and dropped them back into his own lap, and he only stared back at me with wide, fake-innocent eyes. “Let me put it this way, I have to actually  _ go  _ to prom before we can get to the post-prom stuff.”

“Well in that case,” he pushed down the footrest of the chair to stand and spin me with his hands on my shoulders then pushed me toward the door, “what are you still doing here? Go.”

I turned to look back at him over my shoulder, “Chris!”

He wrapped his arms around me from behind, “I’m teasing baby, you know that. Except for the part about how grateful I am that everything up to now led me here, with you.”

I exhaled deeply and melted back against him. “How do you do that?” I asked him without turning around, my eyes staying closed as my head dropped back against his collarbone. 

“Do what?” he asked, right in my ear, while his arms tightened across my shoulders.

“Switch back and forth between silly and sweet and  _ horny  _ and back to sweet again so easily? And take me along with you?”

I felt him shrug. “Is it bad?”

I shook my head against him. “It’s fun. You keep me on my toes. You make me smile; you make me  _ happy _ .”

“Hey,” he waited until I looked up at him, “that goes both ways. You know that, right?” I nodded. “Don’t forget it.” He pressed his lips to my forehead. “Now you really do need to get out of here before I decide to switch gears again.”

He dragged his hands down my arms then patted my butt when I started to walk away.

When I pulled back up in front of the house at almost 11:30, several hours after leaving, there seemed to be a glow coming from behind the blinds that didn’t appear to be created by the television, and when I got to the front door, I could hear music from the bluetooth soundbar under the tv. Chris was standing in front of the end table between the couch and the recliner when I finally got inside, and he’d moved the coffee table out of the room. He wore the best clothes he’d brought with him for the visit, the aforementioned khakis and button-down, and when he stepped toward me, smirking, I saw the champagne bottle and two glasses on the table behind him. 

“Chris, what -,” I chuckled under my breath, taken aback, “what did you  _ do _ ?” I looked up, following the white Christmas lights around the tops of the walls with my eyes.

“Well,” he crossed the room to me, right arm behind his back and left hand out to take mine. I dropped my keys and phone onto the small table beside the door and settled my hand into his. “After you left I started thinking.” I opened my mouth to reply but he brought his right hand around to cover it. “Not a word.” I grinned behind his hand and winked and he slid his hand across my cheek and over my shoulder to move it down my back and pull me into the center of the floor. I brought my free hand up to rest on his shoulder so that he held me in a dancing frame. “I started  _ thinking _ about what we talked about before you left. You’re happier, more confident, with your appearance and your body now than you were at your prom, and I’m much,  _ much  _ happier with my date, my  _ forever date _ , than I was back then,” he knew I had dated my first husband in high school, which, I guessed, was why he didn’t say anything about my date, “so I thought maybe we should both have a redo.”

“You,” I looked up again at the lights then back to him, “you created a prom in my living room?”

He grinned, “I mean, it’s not much, but it’s actually better than a real prom. Because we’re the only ones here, and I can hold you as close as I want,” he pulled me a little closer as if on cue and dropped his hand so low on my back that his pinkie and ring fingers skimmed across the top of my butt, “and we can drink. Legally,” he lifted his eyebrows and nodded over at the table with the champagne. “And,” he dropped his head to rest his temple against mine and speak directly into my ear, starting to turn us in time to the music, “when we’re finished with the dancing, I don’t have to take you home, I get to take you right down the hall.”

My pulse quickened and my stomach clenched and my whole body warmed. I had to resist the urge to pull him to the bedroom right then. He’d put a lot of thought and effort into his whole living room prom, it would feel wrong to not at least have one dance and a glass of champagne. “Christopher Evans, you are too good to be true.”

“Nah,” he shook his head then kissed my cheek, “I just love you.”

I let him pull me even closer and rested my cheek on his chest. “I love you too.”

I certainly didn’t  _ need  _ a private prom in my living room. And if I’d thought that he did it, or any of the other kind, thoughtful, romantic things he did for me on an almost daily basis, because he thought I expected him to, I’d have put a stop to it a long, long time before then. But it was just who he was. Grand gestures weren’t why I loved him, but that romantic streak, that overall kindness and his desire to show me what he felt, was part of what made him  _ him _ . I didn’t believe I deserved it, or him, didn’t believe anyone did, really, but that wouldn’t stop me from spending the rest of my life showing him how much I appreciated it and trying to return the favor.

**Author's Note:**

> All stories in this collection will be an anthology of connected one-shots that exist within the same universe; and the officially no longer follow chronological order. They may eventually be reorganized into novel-format, but that would be quite a way down the road.


End file.
